How to Create Virtual Product Variations in WooCommerce Programmatically

Qaisar Satti

2 months ago

In this tutorial, you will learn about creating virtual product variations programmatically in WooCommerce. These variations are ideal for digital products, as they don’t require physical shipping.

Here’s a quick guide to creating a virtual product variation.

Before proceeding, ensure that:

You have a variable product already created in WooCommerce.
You have the product ID of the parent variable product.

$variation = new WC_Product_Variation();
$variation->set_parent_id( $product_id );
$variation->set_attributes( array( 'attribute_magical' => 'Yes' ) );

$variation->set_sku( 'Qaisar-123' );
$variation->set_image_id( $featured_image_id );

// some basics
$variation->set_downloadable( true ); // default – false
$variation->set_virtual( true ); // default – false

$variation->set_stock_status( 'instock' ); // outofstock, onbackorder

// define prices
$variation->set_regular_price( 40 );
$variation->set_sale_price( 10 );

// set date range if applicable

$variation->set_date_on_sale_from( '2024-01-01' );
$variation->set_date_on_sale_to( '2026-01-01' );

$variation->set_description( 'Programmatically created variation' ); // your description

// downloadable variation
$variation->set_downloads( $downloads );
$variation->set_download_limit( 1 ); // Download limit if applicable
$variation->set_download_expiry( 7 ); // expiry time if applicable

$variation->save();